BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}John,list
I think the evidence for Peirce considering that semiosis is
operative in all realms - the physical-chemical, the biological and
the human conceptual, is in his many references to 'Mind as Matter'
[6.277]; that matter is 'effete Mind' 6.25; 6.158 and that
'protoplasm feels and has Mind [6.251].
And of course, that 4.551 assertion that 'thought is not necessarily
connected with a brain but appears in the work of bees, of crystals
and throughout the purely physical world'.
His outline of the role of chance and spontaneity inthe emergence of
novel forms of matter in his discussion of evolution; and his outline
of cosmology - again, both show the actions of semiosis in Mind
-as-Matter.
His rejection of consciousness as necessary in this semiosis
[7.364,5]
Even the notion of the semiosic process as 'transformation' 4.572
I see his semiosis as an active formative process - of Mind forming
as Matter. I don't see Peircean semiosis as confined to the human
intellect, to the rhetorical interpretation of 'things-to-words or
concepts so to speak..
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Just one other comment. I think that we have to be careful on this
list [and I am NOT referring to you, John] that we do not set
ourselves up as gatekeepers to Peirce. One or two people on this list
seem to think that way - i.e.,I've been told several times that my
views are 'UnPeircean'. My response is that we are all equal; I, for
example, am as smart and as dumb as any other person. I don't think
that anyone can tell another person that their views are 'unPeircean'
or are 'not Peirce' because none of us are the Authoritative
Gatekeepers of What is Peirce. All one can say is: 'I disagree with
your view'.....and outline your own view. That's it.
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Edwina
On Sun 21/01/18 12:23 PM , John F Sowa s...@bestweb.net sent:
On 1/21/2018 9:46 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca [1] wrote:
> His anti-psychologism, for example, which he consistently
maintained
> from the 1860s on, is essentially a refusal to limit the
application of
> logical principles to what goes on in /human/ minds or brains.
But advocating anti-psychologism is independent of advocating
biosemiotics. In discussing logic, he was emphasizing the point
that the definitions are purely formal. They are independent
of any limitation to biological processes.
> But his logic/semiotic was always generalized from the human
> experience of sign use, as he says in CP 1.540. And necessarily
so,
> because “experience is our only teacher”
In CP 1.540, he was also talking about math and logic. The fact
that he generalized his definition from human use does not imply
any limitation to just human use. Such an assumption would
"block the way of inquiry".
> I still don’t see a “change in terminology” here, unless
it’s the
> change in usage of the word “sign” which occurred after 1903.
The
> terminological change was that Peirce gave up using the term
“sign”
> in a way that limited it to the human realm.
What I'd like to know is when Peirce generalized his views about
semiosis to animals. I'll restate the question: How and when did
Peirce's thoughts on biosemiosis (as implied by his MSS) develop?
In 1887, he published an article about logical machines. Among
other things, he cited Jacquard looms (early 1800s) and Babbage's
machines. Ada Lovelace wrote her memoirs about programming them
in 1843. If machines could use signs, there would be no logical
objection to claiming that animals could use signs.
He talked about the use of signs by any "scientific intelligence"
-- for which the only criterion is the ability to learn from
experience. His anecdotes about dogs and parrots showed how they
learn from experience. He also mentioned other kinds of animals
in various writings. His principle of continuity and his knowledge
of Darwin's studies (1859) would lead him to extend at least some
subset of semiosis to animals.
He must have been thinking about generalizing semiosis long
before 1903. Where can we find the evidence?
John
Links:
------
[1]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'g...@gnusystems.ca\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
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